Labor vows to give Democrats a jolt

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said labor needs to be more attentive to its allies. | AP Photo

Richard Trumka , who was reelected as the AFL-CIO’s president Tuesday, downplayed any suggestions of a schism with Democrats — “We have a whole lot more friends in the Democratic Party than we do on the Republican side” — but agreed that labor needs to be attentive to who its allies really are.

“There are many representatives in the Democratic Party who are friends of labor. There are some that are acquaintances of labor and some that are really, I guess, less than acquaintances,” he said. “We will be an independent voice for workers.”

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That language is not new for Trumka, nor is the underlying goal. Since he took over the organization, the former coal miner has emphasized expanding the AFL-CIO’s political resources, building out its capacity to run independent campaigns rather than simply cutting checks to Democratic candidates and independent expenditure groups. (Labor remains a major funder of Democratic outside spending.)

The union giant points to Senate races last year in Massachusetts and Ohio, featuring Warren and Brown, as well as elections in Wisconsin and Montana, as places where the AFL-CIO ran its own operations to protect or vault new progressive leaders into the Senate.

And despite reservations from some conservative-leaning unions, Trumka and his lieutenants have pressed to expand and formalize relationships with other liberal pressure groups outside the labor movement — environmental organizations and women’s advocacy groups, for example.

The idea is that strengthening the progressive coalition overall is a better long-term bet for labor — one that gives unions more freedom and power to support their staunch allies — than pouring cash and energy into the coffers of the Democratic Party.

To some more traditional members of the labor movement, that approach is a lurch in a risky direction for an ideologically diverse union coalition.

“Somehow formalizing partnerships, alignments, affiliations with progressive groups — and the word progressive, progressive, progressive being used to such an extreme — in my judgment is going to alienate many workers,” said Harold Schaitberger, head of the International Association of Fire Fighters.

Laborers’ International Union of North America General President Terry O’Sullivan, who represents the nation’s builders, argued that some level of bipartisanship is essential if unions want to retain their traditional working-class membership and avoid Democratic complacency about their issues.

“We have champions like Nancy Pelosi, who is a champion for working men and women, and then we have others who I think take us for granted,” said O’Sullivan, whose group broke ranks with other unions to endorse GOP Gov. Chris Christie’s reelection in New Jersey. “We have a history of working with Republicans, and we’ll continue to work with Democrats who are like-minded.”

Yet on the whole, the attendees here seemed to gravitate toward Trumka’s version of “independence.” In another resolution, the AFL-CIO committed to building “joint projects and campaigns” with allied groups, specifically naming women’s groups and groups advocating for black, Hispanic and Asian-Americans.

The key, most unions hope, will be showing Democrats that there’s a difference between saying the right things about working people and doing the right things for the labor movement — without losing sight of the reality that there’s only one party that’s broadly supportive of unions at all.

“No one can accuse us of only focusing on one political party when there’s an issue,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, citing AFT’s sharp criticism of both Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (a Democrat) and Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett (a Republican) in an ongoing clash over city schools. “We’re going to speak truth to power about everything.

“But at the end of the day, the Democratic Party, dating back to FDR, has been out there speaking about working folk and how you have a safety net for working people.”